Barely two months after Egyptian gaming startup Anubis Gaming announced it has raised $300,000 seed, another Cairo-based gaming startup, Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) platform Eksab has secured $500,000 from 4DX Ventures, a New York-based early-stage VC focused on African startups.
“Daily Fantasy Sports and monetized competitions are a multi-billion dollar a year industry in the US,” said founder and CEO Aly Mahmoud. “Our goal is to become the premier sports entertainment company in the MEA region by offering exciting Fantasy Sports competitions as well as highly engaging local sports content.”
“We’re bringing the FanDuel and DraftKings model to the world’s largest football market. Our ultimate goal is to provide an unmatched daily source of entertainment, engagement, and content for the region’s football fans.”
Here Is What You Need To Know
- The latest round of investment saw participation from other strategic investors, including from the international sports and entertainment ecosystem.
- Eksab will use its latest funding to scale its product to millions of football fans in the MENA region as well as launch its first paid competitions over the next year.
- In 2019, the startup raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from 500 Startups in June 2019.
Eksab startup Eksab startup
Why The Investor Invested
“We see the region as one of the most exciting and underserved markets for a sports entertainment platform. We’ve been really impressed with Aly’s vision for a next-generation and technology-driven platform that is also highly tailored to local fans and their preferences. We’re excited to be on this journey with Aly and the rest of the Eksab team,” said Peter Orth, Partner at 4DX Ventures.
Investment, last month, in Anubis Gaming came from a regional ecommerce group.
Africa’s gaming ecosystem is still developing. Building on the success of “Aurion’s Heritage of Kori-Odan”, which in 2016 became the very first video game made in Cameroon, Cameroonian startup Kiro’o Games, last Ocotber, announced it has raised $342k as part of a fundraising campaign it launched in 2019. This was not the first time Kiro’o Games was raising funds. The startup successfully raised $305,000 through equity crowdfunding between 2013 and 2018, and and in 2019 launched a $1 million crowdfunding target through its own crowdfunding platform called Rebuntu Equity Crowdfunding.
All over the world, fantasy sports apps have been popular and have attracted VC money in many other markets too. Dream11, an Indian fantasy sports app recently raised $225 million at a valuation of over $2.5 billion. DraftKings, another fantasy sports startup is valued at $18-billion-dollar.
A Look At What Eksab Does
Founded in 2017 by Aly Mahmoud, Eksab, through its mobile apps, enables fans to join competitions to make predictions about live football games, collect points, and then get rewarded with prizes or cash. Eksab’s estimates state that there are over a billion football fans across the Middle East and Africa, an opportunity it wants to tap into — by engaging them.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer